Bible contradiction? How many did God kill for committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab?

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: How many did God kill for committing whoredom with the daughters of Moab?

Here are the two answers which the skeptic believes shows a Bible contradiction:

23,000

“Nor are we to commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day.” (1 Corinthians 10:8)

24,000.

“But those who died from the plague were twenty-four thousand in number.” (Numbers 25:9)

(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

1. When dealing with skeptics’ claim of Bible contradictions it seems one can never be reminded enough of what exactly is a contradiction.  A contradiction occurs when two or more claims conflict with one another so that they cannot simultaneously be true in the same sense and at the same time.  To put it another way, a Bible contradiction exists when there are claims within the Bible that are mutually exclusive in the same sense and at the same time.
2. One should be skeptical of whether this is a Bible contradiction given the Skeptic Annotated Bible’s track record of inaccurately handling the Bible.  See the many examples of their error which we have responded to in this post: Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.  Of course that does not take away the need to respond to this claim of a contradiction, which is what the remainder of this post will do.  But this observation should caution us to slow down and look more closely at the passages cited by the Skeptic Annotated Bible to see if they interpreted the passages properly to support their conclusion that it is a Bible contradiction.
3. The skeptic tries to pit 1 Corinthians 10:8 as affirming the claim “23,000 died for committing sexual immorality  with the Moabites” against Numbers 25:9 as affirming “24,000 died for committing sexual immorality  with the Moabites.”
4. 1 Corinthians 10:8 actually assert the claim “23,000 died for committing sexual immorality  with the Moabites” in one day.  Numbers 25:9 assertion of “24,000 died for committing sexual immorality  with the Moabites” does not mention how long that is.  So we see right away that there’s not a contradiction.  1 Corinthians 10:8 is telling us the deaths in one day while Numbers 25:9 is summarizing the amount of death which is likely the case since Numbers 25:8  mentioned “So the plague on the sons of Israel was brought to a halt” and Numbers 25:9 then is reasonable to see as the total deaths.
5. Numbers 25:9 mentioned the word “plague.”  The Hebrew word is מַגֵּפָה.  The word is used to refer to various kinds of disease. 1 Samuel 6:4 refer to tumors and 2 Chronicles 21:14 refers to disease.  Knowing that this refers to disease also helps us to understand why there’s more deaths after the first day.  Sometimes people don’t die from a disease right away; the process of dying from disease lingers.  So there can be 23,000 deaths in one day.  Then after the first day a thousand more died, for a total of 24,000.
6. There is no contradiction here.  Seems the skeptic needs to learn of How to Handle Bible Contradictions.
7. We shouldn’t miss that worldviews are at play even with the skeptic’s objection to Christianity.  The worldview of the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible actually doesn’t even allow for such a thing as the law of non-contradiction to be meaningful and intelligible.  In other words for him to try to disprove the Bible by pointing out that there’s a Bible contradiction doesn’t even make sense within his own worldview.  Check out our post “Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview.”